Send email with Powershell

There’s two methods I often use for sending email in my Powershell scripts. The first uses the Send-MailMessage cmdlet and the second resorts to using the .Net Framework. Why do I use two methods? Well….

Send-MailMessage -To 'me@here.com' -From 'sender@here.com' -Subject 'Test Message' -Body 'This is a test message.' -SmtpServer 'smtp.server.com';

The Send-MailMessage cmdlet is powerful and easy to use but it’s lacking one important switch. If you’re using a smtp server on a port other than the default (25) then you cannot use this cmdlet to send emails. There’s no switch available to change the port used to send email. Here’s how I get around it.

$smtpClient = New-Object System.Net.Mail.SmtpClient;
$smtpClient.Host = 'smtp.server.com';
$smtpClient.Port = 8025;
$smtpClient.Send('email@email.com','email@email.com','Test Message', 'This is a test message.');

Powershell’s ability to hook into the .Net framework allows us to get around any limitation existing in the built in cmdlets. However, I’m still rooting for a –Port switch in the next version of Powershell!